My thoughts on what could be done with the Amiga.

[Heinz]

thomsedavi wrote:
A final question of my long rambling post (you have no idea how much I'm holding back): what software would I need to acquire to program new Amiga games, anyway? And what manuals, for that matter? And I guess I'd need a hard-drive, too... not to mention a MOUSE...

Take a look at AmiBlitz:

http://www.amiforce.de/amiblitz/amiblitz.php

It's the successor of Blitz Basic and is still updated and bugfixed.
This is probably the best choice for game programming.

If you need a mouse, then you should call a Amiga Dealer.
They can sell you an adaptor that helps you connecting a standard PS/2 Mouse to your Amiga.

[billt]

My other thought is that since technology has become so small, it would be relatively easy to produce an A1200 the size of a mobile phone that could be plugged into a regular monitor. It would be cheap, and there's a huge range of pre-existing software that could be miniaturised - how small could they make a disc with the storage capacity of a floppy? A quarter the size of a postage stamp?

I think they've already done something like that with the Atari, so why not the Amiga?

The Minimig FPGA thing is a step in this direction. Why bother with floppies when the internet is available today, and floppy disks are beginning to become scarce supply? You can use transflash FLASH standard which is about 1/4 USA postage stamp size and comes in pretty big capacities (I think I've seen 1GB) for cell phones.

Why not Amiga? Maybe the right oportunity hasn't come together yet. Those TV joystick things are kindof neat, but you need a good selection of built-in games for them to sell well, and you need the circuit to be very cheap. If the Minimig is cleaned up to work well and a CPU core can be licensed for a single-chip board like happened with the CommodoreOne, then this can happen. It may still be a little early for that, but it'd be cool to see it happen before the fad burns out. Some of the Amiga games may make it tricky though if they need a mouse for control, as I doubt we;d see a joystick bundled with a mouse and I'm not sure we'd see people buyig PS2 or USB mice to add to such things for those games.

[Hyperspeed]

This is a cool thread:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19395

It talks of replacing the double density floppy drive with a compact flash card reader!

I'd say AMOS is pretty ropey for decent games, I've only ever played one great AMOS game (it featured a 2-player game of biplanes bombing each others bases).

Blitz Basic 2 to start with, C then Assembly when you're more experienced. Skidmarks and Worms were both commercial games programmed in Blitz Basic 2.

I think DevPac was used for some games (a C compiler).

A cool Amiga to program for (and one that would give you massive street cred in the underground console coding world) would be the Amiga CD32.

Do the coding on an A1200, burn the CDR and attempt to play it on the CD32. You could even make a debug kit with an SX32(/Pro). Of course, you'd be limited to AGA but I'd say most Amigas floating around as games machines have only classic GFX chips.

MakeCD (the Amiga CD burning software) offers facilities to auto-boot CDTV (A500 console) and CD32 (A1200 console) discs.

Distribution could be achieved by approaching the German distribution companies who might be impressed by your software and put it on their website (maybe even print a box/manual). They also like selling just a keyfile over the net to a limited edition on their site or uploaded to Aminet.

I've wanted to make a game (even if it's a pacman clone) since buying my A1200 in '94. Maybe I'll get into it soon...

:-)

[TheMagicM]

the big deal about new Amiga 'hardware' is the price.  No matter what comes out we all know its going to be expensive.  The hardware is out..support what is out there now.  If a few good games/apps get ported/created for the Pegasos or the A1 you'll end up seeing new users.  

Write a new game.. I'm tired of the games that come out now..the one thing old school games had was playability..they were fun.. not obnoxious games with stunning graphics and no storyline that ended up being put on the shelf after a few hrs of playtime.  I still fire up my A500 and E-UAE to play Amiga games.. hell I even load up my c64 emulator and play one of the 2000+ games I have. LOLZ

[SamuraiCrow]

Plaz wrote:
@SamuraiCrow

So if I wanted to try a little PD game on Amos, I can rework the same code one day with Mattathias Basic to use on PC or RTG Amigas. Hmmm, sounds like I might give it a try. Is the comment about the crummy graphics true though? Will Amos allow me to splice in ASM or ML? I'm thinking of some things I have done in C already. I could compile that to ML then tag it in to Amos. I inherited a set of Amos boxes a couple of years ago with all disk and documentation for 1.2 and 1.3. I'm guessing it's all still relavent for 2.0

Plaz

If you mix machine language with your code on Amos I can guarantee it won't work on a PC.  You may have to start over in Amos or port your C code to use SDL for the graphics-card compatible version.

Also remember that Mattathias is still in the early development stages and not a usable compiler yet.  When it's done it will likely be a cross between GCC and AmosPro with code borrowed from sdlBasic for the runtime library.  It will have object oriented features to allow it to mix some code from C++ as extensions but the main idea is to be able to write extensions in object-oriented languages.

-edit-  The comment about crappy graphics in Amos is based on the fact that Amos is limited to ECS graphics with little HAM mode support meaning you're limited to 63 foreground colors in low-res mode and copper rainbows to give nice backdrops to go with your foreground graphics.

Mattathias will likely be SDL-based for the non-AGA support and will have a minimum of 256-color graphics.  The AGA version will be supporting the copper as well as the bitplanes.  It will be an example of where Amos would have been had its development continued into the present.

[SamuraiCrow]

@Hyperspeed

DevPac is not a C compiler.  It is a 68000 macroassembler for the classic Amigas.

As for what languages to learn, I'd stick with C as a professional and maybe learn some C++.

If you want to write code for other than Windows (which I would assume is the majority of the coders here) then I'd use SDL with OpenGL as the APIs of choice.  Remember to always use OpenGL for the 2d graphics as well as the 3d since the Windows version of SDL stinks.

[Hyperspeed]

by SamuraiCrow:
DevPac is not a C compiler. It is a 68000 macroassembler for the classic Amigas.

What's a macroassembler?

[SamuraiCrow]

A macroassembler converts from the Assembly language to raw binary or object files.  Assembly is a representation of raw machine language that is different from one processor series to the next.  In the case of DevPac, for example, it works only on the 680x0 microprocessors.  It is useless to somebody on a PowerPC-based AmigaOne or a Pentium series PC.

[pixie]

Just a suggestion - if you do make any games, why not distribute them as ADFs? It would save postage, people could use them under emulation and they could be converted back to physical disks for real Amigas.

It would be handier if these adfs could be run from disk directly... there's some devices that allow it, and system legal games would benifit greatly from it, the non-legal games would have to be treaten differently though :S